Formed by our very own, and sadly, late Patriarch ‘Blairgowrie’, the DangerDogz came into being in 2006 with a view to flying the IL-2 Sturmovik WWII flight simulator. It now boasts a large membership, primarily from Europe, North America and Canada. Our pilots cover all abilities, ranging from those going through “learn as they fly” (no grading here, it’s not Crufts after all!) through to us being proud to claim as our own, past winners of the Joint Ops Virtual Combat Pilot School“Top Gun” competition.

There is however one training routine we would like to make all new members aware of, which is our ‘Sufficient Height and Elevation Escape Procedure’ known as ‘SHEEP’.

You may often hear on comms references to, “having a bad experience while in an inverted SHEEP” or “I got a bad kick back whilst doing a SHEEP” and “I woke up in a field after pulling a SHEEP”.

We would like to assure all new and prospective members of a sensitive disposition that no depravity is inferred (except in some cases, but that’s another story).

The DangerDogz have many well respected members of both the Vanilla and Modding Communities. Despite the geographical spread and time zones (we have even invented our own), there is one thing that unites the group, and that is a desire to have fun, enjoy camaraderie like being down the pub with your mates and share in the immersion provided by this fantastic simulator. OK, strictly speaking that’s three things, but the Dogz never could count. We run both formal and informal events, so informal in fact that when a mission is terminated due to someone crashing on take-off (a less than infrequent event) it can be every man for himself as your wingman lines you up for a kill. We meet multiple times through the week with attendance welcomed, not expected.

The DangerDogz form part of the K9 Squadrons, a loose amalgamation of our own group and the HellHounds. The group stays up to date with the latest official versions of IL-2 as well as HSFX mods and all the extra goodies they have to offer. Some of our members also like to indulge their Biggles fantasies playing ‘Rise of Flight’ or enjoying the thrust of ‘Lock On’. In March 2011 we added the long-awaited follow-up ‘Cliffs of Dover’.

What is ‘IL-2 Sturmovik’?

IL-2 Sturmovik popped into the collective consciousness at large in late 1998, when an obscure Russian developer Oleg Maddox started publicizing his new project to the flight simulation community (a genre that until then had been dominated by large American publishers).

Of note was the fact that his project focused on the Russian Front of the war, prior flight sims had their sights firmly on showcasing the American and other Western aircraft, and this was met at the time with scepticism. This scepticism initially gave way to great anticipation when the first screenshots and technology briefs were released. I say initially because at that time PC's were relatively limited in their abilities (never mind the fact that the computers that got the Apollo up and down were less able than most pocket calculators) and this perception of the PC's abilities started rumors of IL2 Sturmovik being something of a con.

How much easier for complacent competitors to shift focus away from their own lack of ability to produce such high quality and highly optimized code. Heavens forbid the masses should ever realise...ermm think.. that they had been hoodwinked into parting with hard earned money for a budget release (the budget was in the production not the price of course!).

In 2001 IL-2:Sturmovik was finally released to the public, and boy oh boy did it sweep the competition under the carpet. Some pundits claimed it made its competitors offerings obsolete with its well executed flight modelling and damage modelling. The graphics were the true icing on the cake, with 3D modeling that really brought the flight sim 'to life', with detailed interiors and exteriors that were a credit to the publishers obvious enthusiasm for the genre. And the weapons modelling...

They pulled off what could be considered to be a miracle, the defacto flight simulator was improved significantly with improved graphics, flight modeling and weapons modeling and the small and easy to overlook addition of a significant number of new flyable aircraft, including many of Russia's WWII allies.

And again 1C:Maddox continued to listen to its customers and provided unrivalled support for the IL-2 franchise. Several free patches were released that both addressed bugs and limitations, and in some cases corrected historical portrayals of specific aircraft capabilities. They also added several new flyables and non-flyables for free.

The bloodline continued with the release of the “Aces Expansion Pack” followed by “Pacific Fighters” which introduced naval operations and the excitement of trying to land your plane on what seems like a postage stamp of a carrier. These were then followed by IL-2 Stumovik : 1946 which rolled all of the previous updates into one unified package and added still more aircraft types, campaigns and scenarios for building your own missions. The bar had now been set at a height others could only dream of.

This simulator took off again in March 2011 (a full two weeks after the release of ‘IL-2 1946’ - bit of an in-joke) with a return to the skies of Western Europe with the fall of France and the RAF’s fight for survival over the fields of southern England in the Battle of Britain with the release of the next installment in the franchise, ‘IL-2 Sturmovik – Cliffs of Dover’. Boasting a whole new engine, enhanced graphics, weather, flight, damage and weapons modelling,

This is where the story takes a sad turn as CloD as it became known rapidly turned into a bit of a damp squib. Problems with many aspects of the game meant that the hoped for (some might say over-hyped) new standard in flight simulation fell rather flat. Shortly afterwards Maddox was bought by 777 Studios (the producers of 'Rise of Flight') and this merger gave rise in due course to 'Battle of Stalingrad' and more recently, 'Battle of Moscow'. Both these simulators are good in their own way but thus far have lacked the content to tempt the majority of our members to switch over (there's a few die-hards out there though!).

CloD however, refused to die. Through the considerable efforts of the the modding community, the game has been repaired, is now fully playable and once again the Dogz can be found roaming the skies of South-East England and Northern France usually in our trademark formation (otherwise known as the 'group gaggle' - often spread over several miles of sky!) More recently we have added our own game servers which are available to the wider community (donations toward the running costs are always welcome but no buttons please!) and we are also participating in the online torm of War campaign as a squadron in our own right.

We haven't forgotten our roots though so although IL-2 '46 is still our main, and most popular game platform, you'll find plenty of people here who are into DCS, or CloD or RoF or BoS or...

So there you have it. This is who we are and what we are about. Thanks for stopping by and reading the blurb. Now, having got that out of the way, welcome to our home on the web, grab a beer and sign up - We'll see you in the virtual skies!

Welcome to Pages

Pages extends your site with custom content management designed especially for communities.
Create brand new sections of your community using features like blocks, databases and articles,
pulling in data from other areas of your community.

Create custom pages in your community using our drag'n'drop, WYSIWYG editor.
Build blocks that pull in all kinds of data from throughout your community to create dynamic pages,
or use one of the ready-made widgets we include with the IPS Community Suite.

Recently Browsing
0 members

Recent Status Updates

I've been away for, what seems like an eternity, never lost interest or forgot my roots - simply no time for anything else other than renovating my house but work is now done and now looking forward to making up for lost time